Nineteenth century medicine (Improvements to surgery)

Question 1

What were the problems with surgery in the early nineteenth century?

Answer 1

1. No reliable anaesthetics were available. In the past. People were in agony duing surgeries; some died from shock and most had to be held down by several people due to large amounts of movement. The most common anaesthetics were either getting drunk or being knocked out by hitting on the head.
2. Operation theatres were dirty. Tools were never washed between surgeries and surgeons didn’t wash their hands before surgeries. All this led to infections after surgery being one of the biggest killers since there were no antiseptics.

Question 2

How did surgeons overcome the problem of pain?

Answer 2

In 1846, an American dentist found that a gas called ether could knock a patient out for long enough to carry out what would have been painful operations. However, there were problems with ether:

1. It was hard to transport.
2. It irritated the lungs of the patient which caused him to cough during operation.
3. It irritated the eyes of surgeons and made it hard to see during operations.
4. It was highly flammable and was a disaster during night time operations when candles were used.

Question 3

How was chloroform was discovered?

Answer 3

In 1847, a Scottish doctor named James Simpson was trying to find an anasthetic that was better than Ether. He and a few friends sniffed many chemicals to try to find one with knockout properties. The finally found it when they fell asleep as they tried chloroform.
He quickly published his results.

Question 4

Why was there opposition to chloroform?

Answer 4

1. Some people argued that the long term effects of chloroform was unknown.
2. In 1848, a patient died from chloroform during an experiment to remove an overgrown toenail.
3. Chloroform was used to relieve childbirth pains. Some religious people believed women should endure childbirth pain as it says in the Bible.
4. Army officials said pain during operations made a soldier stronger.

Question 5

What made chloroform popular?

Answer 5

In 1857, Queen Victoria used chloroform during childbirth. From that point on, chloroform became widely used.

Question 6

How were antiseptics discovered?

Answer 6

Despite having good anasthetics, people were still dying from infections post surgery. Following the publication of germ theory in 1861, doctors were aware of the fact that germs cause infections. In 1867, an English surgeon named Joseph Lister found that carbolic acid was good at killing germs. He thus created a spraying device that applied carbolic spray constantly during operations. He noticed that death figures due to infections dropped significantly as a result of this.

Question 7

What were the problems with carbolic spray?

Answer 7

1. Irritant to patients’ flesh and surgeons’ skin.

2. Made everything smell.